My Journey Through Words.

“I love words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.” – Anne Rice

When you take a moment to think about the blogosphere, it can be downright overwhelming. Different blog hosting sites, niches, memes (or is it meme’s? Who knows, who cares.), contests, etc. With all these distractions, it can be difficult to pinpoint why someone blogs and what the aim of their blog is. The ‘About’ page is my best friend when I’m blog surfing. If I can’t be hooked by the ‘About’, there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell I’m going to dive into endless posts to see if the writing style is worth it.

From all of my ‘About’ page adventures, it seems that most of us are here with some form of hope/dream/wish/hallucination we will become an author, whether through public or self-publishing. This realization made me take a step back and ask myself… why am I here?

I’ve been a teller of tales since I was young. If I wasn’t writing, directing, and acting in a play with friends, I would be locked away in my bedroom carrying on a week-long Barbie saga I concocted. Sleezebag Ken often had a wandering eye, and Barbie was over his shit. Throughout elementary school, a friend and myself worked on a book – I wrote and she illustrated. Granted, I can only imagine the content of said book now, but it brought joy to my little K-5 heart.

By middle school, I had moved past working with friends when it came to writing. I had become obsessed interested in the television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What started as a joke to a friend that I was secretly a vampire slayer became a several-hundred page novel I worked on throughout middle school. My inner-circle of friends would beg me for new chapters like crack addicts without a fix.

Following in the fanfiction-esque style of writing, I spent most of high school writing about the Backstreet Boys. No joke. And I will still defend to this day that if Nick Carter found me, he would instantly get sober and marry me. When I began writing tales about the Backstreet Boys, a friend had encouraged me to form an “online zine” (aka: magazine) and send out chapters weekly. In about three months time, my Mom and AOL’s Customer Support became best friends. My “zine” quickly grew from 50-100 readers to well over 2,000. Each month my Mom would have to chum it up with good old AOL and request special emailing privileges for me.

Then came college, where I began writing for the school newspaper. I did this casually and was often undermined by the Senior Writer. He had a nasty habit of stealing my work and placing his name on it. Tsk, tsk.

Shortly after finishing college, I began working on my first book – a humorous memoir outlining my days of being a slut. While this book has slightly been placed on a back-burner, I fully intend on finishing it. My main focus for now is my first fictional novel that dabs in mystery, self-growth, and magic.

So, here we are, back to the original question… Why am I here?

I’m here to write. I’m here to inspire and create new thoughts. I’m here to deliver all the words that spin recklessly around in my mind all day. And like many others, I’m here in hopes of one day being published, whether publicly or self. There’s probably a certain part of you that is thinking: Big whoop. You like to write. Welcome to 2013 – the World of Bloggers. But the reason I am astonished about where I am and why I’m here is just this:

It was never my dream.

When we traveled through my museum of lost career aspirations, I told you about my past wishes to be a reporter. Considering that aspiration was in place because I liked sitting at a desk, it doesn’t count for squat. In fact, to be honest, I never really put much thought into writing before now. It was just something I did for fun — it wasn’t a future career, hobby, or paycheck. I haven’t worked to become an author since I was five years old and I haven’t experienced what it’s like to receive hundreds of rejection letters before receiving the golden letter. In fact, I’ve never done any of the things that most writers have had to do in attempts to be found. I’ve never put the time, effort, money, and years into writing as many have, simply because it was never my dream before. I have never allowed writing to be my dream.

The mere idea of wanting to become a writer sounds almost foolish to me – given the circumstances of my surroundings. I come from a ridiculously talented gene pool, filled with artists, musicians, and writers. Who am I to take a space in the line in hopes of becoming known for my writing? How dare I give myself that chance when there are others close by who have worked at it for years? Do I have less or more of a chance to become published because I haven’t spread my name loosely throughout the industry?

I don’t know the answers to these questions; however, I do know that without answers, there’s no reason to not allow myself dreams of becoming an author. And if that plan doesn’t come to fruition, I clearly have a future career as an overly self-analytical bookophile blogger.

17 responses to “My Journey Through Words.”

Interesting post. I love being a “bookophile blogger,” and otherwise, I can’t say have any “goals” with my writing. It’s great when authors are able to live off of their writing and gain some degree of micro-celebrity for it, but I wonder whether their writing (or their interest in it) will suffer once it is no longer a hobby and more like a job. The dream may lose something after it becomes a reality.

I may never know what it is to live off my creative writing, but as someone who does pull a paycheck from writing, I’d say no, the dream doesn’t necessarily fade. Yes, it can be tough after a long day or week of writing about something that doesn’t fire you up to come home and peck at that dusty novel, but you’ve still got it to peck at. As Cait knows, I’ve had a fair amount of low-grade success as a playwright, and I’ve written them all while I was grinding away as a journalist and copywriter–and yeah, writing about stuff that doesn’t fire me up in the least. The dream only loses something if you decide to let it go.

This is so good to hear. For now, I can only dream of being published one day. Again – I haven’t really tried because where I am now is the more of the write nonstop, no matter what you’re writing, stage. You make a good point about writing as a passion and a job – even when we do write for a paycheck, we can never lose sight of writing about what makes us passionate.

Ummmm, the way I see it, you already are an author… and you have 160 followers, which is nothing to scoff at. You may not be selling copies of your work (yet), but you’re an author nevertheless, and I give you props. Here. Props. Lots and lots of them.

This is so sweet, thank you. I like your perspective – whose to say who is an author, and whose not? I tend to have moments of self doubt and worry that I’m not providing content that people will enjoy. Thank you for the encouragement and support 🙂